Imperialist wars — that is, wars for dominance over the world, for markets for bank capital, for the strangulation of small and weak nations — are inevitable under such conditions. And it is precisely such a war that constituted the first great imperialist war of 1914-1917.

And the extraordinarily high stage of development of world capitalism in general, and the replacement of free competition by monopoly capitalism, and the preparation by banks, as well as by associations of capitalists, of the apparatus for social regulation of the process of production and distribution of products, and the horrors, calamities, ruination, and debasement engendered by imperialist war — all this makes the stage of capitalist development now attained an era of proletarian, socialist revolution.

This era has begun.

Only a proletarian, socialist revolution can extricate humanity from the impasse created by imperialism and imperialist wars. Whatever the difficulties of the revolution and its possible temporary reverses or waves of counter-revolution may be — the ultimate victory of the proletariat is inevitable.

The task confronting the proletariat in the present era is therefore placed on the agenda by virtue of objective conditions: comprehensive direct preparation of the proletariat for revolution and a decisive break with that bourgeois distortion of socialism which has triumphed in the official social-democratic parties in the form of social-chauvinism (that is, socialism in words, chauvinism in deeds, or the masking under the slogan of "defence of the fatherland" of the defence of capitalist interests in imperialist wars), as well as in the form of the "centre" current (that is, unprincipled, helpless wavering between social-chauvinism and revolutionary-internationalist proletarian struggle*) — the conquest of political power for the implementation of the economic and political measures constituting the content of the socialist revolution.

* Text: "of revolution and a decisive break ... proletarian struggle)" was crossed out in the manuscript. Ed.

* * *

The fulfilment of this task, which requires the utmost confidence, the closest fraternal alliance and direct unity of revolutionary action by the working class of all advanced countries, is impossible without an immediate and principled break with that bourgeois distortion of socialism which has triumphed in the upper ranks of the vast majority of official social-democratic parties. Such distortion consists, on the one hand, of the social-chauvinist current, socialism in words and chauvinism in deeds, the masking under the slogan of "defence of the fatherland" of the defence of the predatory interests of "one's own" national bourgeoisie, and on the other hand, of an equally widespread and international current of so-called "centrism," which stands for unity with the social-chauvinists, for the preservation or reformation of the bankrupt Second International, wavering between social-chauvinism and the revolutionary-internationalist struggle of the proletariat for the establishment of a socialist order.

* * *

The experience of the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917, which created Soviets of Workers' Deputies and a number of similar organisations, thereby confirmed the experience of the Paris Commune, which consisted in this: that the proletariat needs a state for the transitional period towards socialism, but this state* must not be a state of the usual type, but rather the direct mass and universally comprehensive organisation of armed workers, replacing the former instruments of authority: the standing army, the police and the bureaucracy. The elucidation to the proletariat of the tasks of such a state — capable as

* Text: "The experience of the Russian revolutions ... but this state" was crossed out in the manuscript. The end of the paragraph accidentally remained uncrossed; it was written on a separate page, at the end of which an unknown hand made the note: "Add: the preparedness of the apparatus for regulating production in the form of trusts and the concentration of banks" (see the insertion by V. I. Lenin in "Draft of Amendments to the Theoretical, Political and Certain Other Sections of the Programme." Works, 5th ed., vol. 32, pp. 139-140). Ed.